Orlando or Panama City Beach?

This is where the two differ most. Orlando is inland. The soft Atlantic sands of Cocoa Beach and New Smyrna are about an hour away, and the calmer Gulf water at Clearwater nearer two, so the sea is usually one outing in a week otherwise spent at hotel pools and water parks.

Panama City Beach sits right on about 43km of fine white quartz sand, and the clear green Gulf is a few steps from the condo every day. The sheltered lagoon at St. Andrews State Park suits small children, and boats run out to the undeveloped shore of Shell Island. Rip currents are a real risk here, so check the flags.

Neither is a food destination, but Orlando has more range once you drive away from the resort corridors. Mills 50 has a run of Vietnamese and other Asian kitchens, Winter Park and Audubon Park have chef-led restaurants and farmers' markets, and inside the parks Epcot's World Showcase is a good place to graze.

Panama City Beach does one thing simply: grouper, shrimp baskets and oysters from the nearby bays, eaten at dockside decks and open-air shacks. Beyond the seafood, most of the choice is chains and themed restaurants along Front Beach Road.

Neither city suits a trip planned around museums, but Orlando has one sight worth crossing town for. The Morse Museum in Winter Park holds the largest Tiffany collection anywhere, including his chapel from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and Loch Haven Park and downtown add an art museum and a history centre. Panama City Beach has the small Man in the Sea Museum on diving history and the older streets of St. Andrews across the bay, and not much more.

Orlando has two kinds of evening out. The themed bars of Disney Springs and CityWalk are easy and close early. Downtown around Orange Avenue, a university crowd keeps bars and clubs busy late at weekends, and Ivanhoe Village has a relaxed gay scene.

Panama City Beach has no club scene at all. A night out means tiki bars, frozen drinks at sunset and cover bands on decks over the sand. In March spring break makes the strip loud and rowdy, and outside summer most of the town is quiet by mid-evening.

Both are flat, and both are about water, just different water. Orlando's outdoors are mostly freshwater: kayaking on the clear springs at Wekiwa, manatees at Blue Spring in winter, airboats past alligators, and birdwatching towards the coast at Merritt Island.

Panama City Beach has the slight edge because the sea itself is the outdoors. There are dunes and lagoon snorkelling at St. Andrews, a rare coastal dune lake at Camp Helen, dolphin trips and paddleboarding on St. Andrew Bay, and diving on the wrecks offshore.

Orlando has the stronger list. The Kennedy Space Center, with the Saturn V and the shuttle Atlantis, is about an hour away. Spanish-founded St Augustine, Tampa's Ybor City and the Dalí Museum in St Petersburg each make a full day out.

From Panama City Beach the outings are gentler: the pastel planned towns along Scenic Highway 30A, the old oyster port of Apalachicola, and Pensacola's naval aviation museum, which is about as far as a day trip goes. From either base you need a car.

Both are built for families, but Orlando works on another scale. Walt Disney World alone has four theme parks and two water parks, and Universal, SeaWorld and Legoland come on top. The resorts are designed so children never need to leave, but the heat, the queues and the size of it all mean you should plan rest days.

Panama City Beach offers a simpler family week: warm, shallow summer water, a condo with a pool, a water park, dolphin shows and mini-golf along Front Beach Road. Avoid March, and take the beach flags seriously.

Neither works without a car, and Orlando is the harder of the two. Parks, hotel zones and downtown are spread far apart along Interstate 4, and the pavements are not made for walking between them. Families staying inside Disney or Universal can get by on monorails, boats and gondolas.

Panama City Beach is one long strip along a single beach road, so finding your way is easy, and once you have parked you can walk along the sand between beach accesses. The trolley-buses are slow, though, and summer traffic crawls.

Orlando is a genuine reason to travel for anyone hunting brands. There are two large premium outlet centres on International Drive and Vineland Avenue, a luxury mall, brand stores at Disney Springs, and tree-lined Park Avenue in Winter Park for boutiques. Panama City Beach has an open-air centre of chain stores near the pier, souvenir warehouses with shark-mouth entrances and surf shops. For anything more individual, head to the 30A towns.

In Orlando, rooms away from the parks along International Drive and in Kissimmee are fairly priced. What adds up is the rest: multi-day park tickets, express queue passes, parking and meals inside the parks.

Panama City Beach is the cheaper week, mainly because its main sight, the beach, costs nothing. Condos with kitchens keep food bills down, and rates drop sharply outside summer and spring break, which makes long winter stays especially good value. Restaurants and car hire still cost what they do at any American resort.

Orlando has a real main stage at the Dr. Phillips Center, home to the Orlando Philharmonic and touring Broadway shows. There is also Shakespeare in Loch Haven Park, the long-running Fringe in spring, and polished stage shows and fireworks inside the parks. In Panama City Beach live performance mostly means cover bands and acoustic sets on bar decks, plus a modest season at the restored historic theatre across the bay in Panama City.

Neither is a place to choose for rest, and the difference is in kind. In Orlando, relaxation comes from facilities: resort spas, lazy rivers and landscaped pools around Lake Buena Vista, used to recover between park days, with Winter Park's lakes for a quieter afternoon. Panama City Beach has only a few spas. Its calm comes from the setting, with empty sand and long sunset walks from autumn to spring.